The system had a number of beneficial outcomes. Overcapacity was reduced by 30%, the occupancy
rate of buses increased, congestion was relieved, and air pollution reduced at least proportionately (specific figures are not yet available). The reduced frequency of service and increased waiting time were offset by the increased speed of service. A negative side effect of the auction system has been the relocation of small operations to adjacent streets and residential areas, somewhat diluting the effectiveness of the auction (Figueroa, 1993). In response, the government is planning to extend the auction system to a wider area. There is also a proposal for a similar system for private cars, including a road pricing system. Like the Singapore congestion pricing system, the Santiago auction system may not be applicable
everywhere, but the innovative ideas it contains could help devise a system for cities, like Manila, with similar congestion and pollution problems and a large private fleet of public transport.
CHAPTER 6 ECONOMIC INSTRUMENTS FOR THE GLOBAL COMMONS
The scope and role of economic instruments are not limited to the management of domestic
environmental problems, but extend to the management of the global commons, such as the
conservation of tropical forests, the preservation of biodiversity, and the protection of the global climate and the ozone layer. As in the case of local environmental problems, the cost of controlling global pollutants or conserving resources of global significance varies significantly among countries as does people's willingness to pay for accomplishing global environmental objectives. The demand for global environmental policy comes mainly from the developed countries which have sufficiently high incomes and low discount rates to be concerned with environmental amenities and distant threats to their lifestyles. The lowest cost supply comes mainly from developing countries either by virtue of their greater biodiversity, lower energy efficiency, or lower opportunity costs. Under these circumstances equal or proportional emission reductions by all countries would be excessively costly, if not totally unacceptable to developing countries. Economic instruments could be used as vehicles for the internalization of global environmental benefits to developing countries: in terms of efficiency, the cost of a given global environmental improvement would be minimized (cost-effectiveness); in terms of distribution, the wealthy beneficiaries would pay and the poor countries would benefit (equity)
along the lines of the “beneficiary pays principle.” In the absence of a global government with taxation power, developed countries' willingness to pay for conservation could be captured through new innovative trading arrangements between developed and developing countries. Developing countries need financial resources and efficient technology to pursue sustainable development, in exchange they can offer:
a) unmatched biological diversity that can best be preserved only in situ;
b) forests that are of global significance in terms of their impact on global climate and
atmospheric balance; and
c) environmental amenities that include wildlife and other natural assets of recreational,
educational, and scientific value.
The South could offer to trade environmental conservation for financial and technological resources on behalf of the global community. It has a comparative advantage to do so because protection and maintenance of natural resources is labor-intensive and requires proximity and intimate knowledge of the resource, as well as interest in preserving national sovereignty.
But how are such trading arrangements actually to be effected? While there is a well-developed
market for financial and technological resources, there is no such market for the conservation of natural and biological resources. This is due to the nature of these resources (global externalities), the lack of well defined (and fully recognized) property rights, and the difficulty of enforcing contracts across borders in the absence of a “global authority” that supersedes national sovereignty. Moreover, the object of conservation and exchange is difficult to define and monitor. Despite these difficulties, some exchanges of this nature have taken place. Examples include debt-for-nature swaps, the Global Environmental Facility, the prospecting rights purchased by the Merck Pharmaceutical Company in Costa Rica, and the EcoFund in Poland created through debt-conversion and several carbon-offset arrangements between northern power utilities and southern energy companies or forest concerns. However, as these exchanges circumvent rather than enhance the market, they remain more the exception than the rule. Just as other goods and services are traded, mechanisms need to be developed through the market for trading conservation and global climate protection. Transferable development rights and internationally tradeable emission permits provide such mechanisms.
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